November 30, 2012

The oft-seen advertisement for AT&T is my current favorite, showing a real-life incredible running play in high school football. I get major warm fuzzies every time I see it, because watching someone get a ticket to greatness punched OUGHT to give you warm fuzzies.

The ad ends up with Head Coach Bob Stoops of Oklahoma Sooner football fame greeting the player who ran the miraculous play, leading you to believe the kid got a Sooner scholarship offer.

Go here and watch the four-minute video, which is really an audio of an air traffic controller of ground operations in the Tower at Vancouver International (YVR), British Columbia, Canada. You hear the tower controller directing the landing and taxi of aircraft at that busy airpatch, then the audio focuses on one aircraft, Air Canada 187. That aircraft carries a special passenger, a woman in Seat 25C who is about to become betrothed in the most unusual marriage proposal you ever heard.

If this doesn't rate a hearty "Awwwww!" in your book, you are one cold fish.

We spend $1.55 billion per year on foreign aid to Egypt, they now have a self-proclaimed strongman, who started out as a duly-elected President*, and now one of their Courts just sentenced the motor-mouth Florida Christian pastor Terry Jones to death in absentia for blasphemy against Islam. Seven others, all citizens or legal resident aliens of the USA (one also resides part of the time in Canada), all former Egyptians and all Coptic Christians, were also sentenced.

Look, it shouldn't be US Policy to tell other countries what to do with their internal rule, but likewise, all money we give other countries for support of their governments ought to have a few strings attached. One of those strings must be basic human rights. It is NOT okay, in our country where religious freedom is the rule of our law, to fork dollars over to another country which orders the killing of people in the name of their officially-established religion, for offenses which are strictly religious and NOT recognized as any other level of crime by any other form of court.

In case you don't know, Dear Readers, Egypt is the largest recipient of US foreign aid after Israel. Politically, we've been giving Egypt all those dollars to artificially support them in a style they oughtn't be used to, but primarily, we gave them money to have them as a bulwark against radical Islam in the region (80% of the money went to the Egypt Army). Now that there has been regime change there (including in the Army), and they have evidently adopted radical Islam as their State Religion, it's time to end the foreign aid, entirely, or at least, reduce it to say, the level of aid we give Yemen.

I have an idea. Let's tell the government of Mohammed Morsi that they have ten calendar days to produce an official document over Morsi's now-all-powerful signature telling us and the world that their kangaroo court proceeding against our citizens/protected aliens is symbolic only, means nothing more than, say, Catholic Ex-Communication would, and would never be physically enforced even if any of the affected people showed up in Egypt (a possibility due to bounty-kidnapping), or, if Egypt fails to so state, we not only cut off all the foreign aid, but we immediately give it to Israel, for direct military support.

If that document is not forthcoming, and it won't be, we not only end the aid and increase Israel's, we put Egypt on the list of nations our citizens may not visit under penalty of having their passports suspended. IIRC, tourism is Egypt's biggest producer of foreign currency, ironic since people don't go there to see the current culture, only an ancient one long gone. We next make an extreme effort to persuade the European Union to do the same. We might or might not succeed with Europe, it all depends on how we sweeten the price in Brussels, but just making the effort will scare the Izar off of Morsi.

President Obama has been frittering away our global power, some say by design. We still have one global power-arrow left in our quiver, though, and that is the Almighty Dollar.

November 29, 2012

...this is a "44 Day", so the only thud will be if I drop something at the reloading bench. Of course, if I do that, I will follow the mechanic's usual sanction: a six-pack to share among all present for the dropped tool event. Gosh, I'd have to drink it all myself...too bad. Make it Terminator Stout, meck-a-neck. Actually, it's a continuation of "44 Week", because earlier this week I have already loaded some 44 Magnum, mid-range loads with 240 XTP-JHP and 10.0 and 10.2 grains of Unique for chronograph and accuracy trial. Some 44 Special have also rolled off the press, loaded with Xtreme Bullets' 200-gr Copper-Plated Flat-Nose and shoved along by 5.1 and 5.4 grains of Unique. Those are for the charter Arms snubbie.

Note the similarity? I'm thinking of Unique as my go-to powder for all things handgun-caliber, and my Winter load development will reflect this. Last Winter, my 44 development centered on "Skeeter" heavy rifle loads in 44 Magnum, and I was not happy with the results. The Hornady XTP apparently doesn't like speeds in the light-bullet twist of my Marlin 1894C much over 1500-1700 fps, and some of mine approached 1900. They were 6-10 MOA at 100 yards, from a rested rifle, some even keyholed, and two recovered bullets from the berm showed the effects of wiped rifling marks, showing that the bullets jumped the rifling towards the end of the barrel. So, my first cure is to go from the H110 they were loaded with (max load of 23.5 in the 44 maggy) to a hotter Unique, and maybe even to Blue Dot, to get all the pushing done in the first third of the carbine barrel.

We'll see. Could be that the XTP bullet itself is the issue, not the powder. Maybe a gas-checked cast boolit solution here? Buffalo Bore's site says not to use a bullet over 270 grains at all in the Model 1894, the super-slow one-in-38 twist rate doesn't support heavy boolits. If that's the case, I'll melt and recast some of the Oregon Trail True-Shot 310's I got into a 240-gr SWC Lyman mold I have and try those. The Oregon Trail lead is very hard, should work well at 1500-1700 or so.

November 28, 2012

This post isn't about me, though, it's about speculative wagering passing as commodities trading. InTrade.com has been forced out of business by the Feddle Gummint because it's a betting house masquerading as a commodities broker. Or maybe a commodities broker marketing wagers. Or something.

I follow a different path here. I'm of a more conservative school of investors, and I believe that even options trading is nothing but wagering. Development of "Spiders" or Exchange-Traded-Funds, is all about wagering, not investment.

Put it this way: if you want to buy a piece of a company, follow it's fortune with your investment, and trade that piece of a company on an open exchange, fine, you are an investor, and you deserve to call yourself one.

If you want to make a wager on whether a company's stock will rise or fall next week, you are not an investor, you are simply a bettor. Income from betting is simple, personal income, and should remain that way. Calling it investment income muddies up the tax waters and shouldn't continue as tax collection practice.

All these side-bets on the economy have a name: derivatives. All derivatives trading needs to be completely separate from trading a company's public stock, but it isn't. Put and call options, futures trading in common stock (as opposed to futures trading in commodities such as wheat or oil) and all forms of speculation on currencies need to be regulated as wagers, taxed as wagers and called wagers. The exchanges which permit their "trading" (read: making and collecting bets) should not be allowed to host trading in common stocks or bonds.

Read this post by Oleg Volk. He challenges the current and probably phony Government report on inflation with his own calculations. If the Government can lie to us that badly about something basic such as the loss of purchasing power of our dollars, how can we trust them to regulate sophisticated instruments of trading such as derivatives? If those derivatives are not regulated, though, and they become entrenched in the very fabric of our economy, then the entire economy is based on false pretenses. There is ample history of what happens next. The "fiscal cliff" isn't even a minor pot-hole compared to that fiscal debacle, which will properly be called a collapse.

"Benghazigate" is just the latest in FUBAR appearing to come from the White House, but, as always, vigorously denied by the professional liars deniers at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The bottom line here is that we now accept that all the initial intell available to the POTUS told, or should have told, the White House and/or the Secretary of State, that the lengthy attack at the Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, was a pre-planned Al-Q op all along. Hell, any one of us could have said that Al-Q would be pulling some sort of attack, somewhere, on 9-11-12, just to memorialize their great attack on the USA eleven years earlier.

So, now we know that the "talking points", or, CIA-prepared public statement material, was altered. We just don't know who altered it.

Make that YOU don't know who altered it. I know to a moral certainty who altered it.

That person is the Shadow President. That person works right next to President Obama.

The REAL story of Benghazigate WILL involve Valerie Jarrett, smack in the middle of it, but even Benghazigate itself pales to insignificance beside the REAL question here: just who IS the de-facto President of the United States, Barack Obama or Valerie Jarrett? You do NOT want to know this answer, because on an actual left-right political spectrum with both of them on it, Barack Obama is nowhere near the left end of that spectrum, Valerie Jarrett is. Now construct yourself another spectrum showing fealty to the Constitution. "No fealty at all" through to "total fealty". Valerie Jarrett would be off that spectrum, well off of the "No Fealty at all" end of it, because her demonstrated "advice" to President Obama, who IS somewhere on that spectrum, involves ignoring the Constitution entirely, and working to replace it with some other base construct.

This Nation can survive Barack Obama, acting on his own motivation and advice. It cannot survive Barack Obama acting on Valerie Jarrett's motivation & advice.

First, there was a Samsung Sucks post in which I wrote about my hapless ownership of a Samsung Galaxy S2 smartphone, but I mishandled the Blog Editor after I published it, and the post went away some hours after I had published it.

So next, I wrote a proper explanation of why it went away, and the TypePad blog editor STILL hates me, so THAT just went away as well.

BenC, your appropriate comment on what I should do with my Samsung phone and the wireless service it is contracted to also went away, sorry about that, no offense intended. Ben told me to "root" the phone. If you are an Apple Phreak, that's known as "jailbreaking", and basically, you instruct the Android IOS that YOU are the master of it, not the phone company. It voids your phone warranty, but you gain control over your phone, it's apps and it's memory. I'll think about doing that, but I might also upgrade, or I might buy out of the present contract and have a complete do-over to an ordinary dumb-phone, saving myself $1000/year if both I and the gudwife do that.

We, the People, can end this "fiscal cliff" nonsense. We have 16.5 calendar months to do it, not just one month as the doomsayers have screamed at us from our TVs and computer screens.

The Federal Government, through it's IRS, collects income and business taxes 470 days after they are payable. The fiscal cliff doomsayers seem to have forgotten that fact.

Yes, if nothing is done in the next 32 days, the tax rates will all rise on January First. We don't pay those new rates until our tax bills are payable on April 15th, 2014. Yes, employers and your other payers such as pensions, etc, will try to adjust the withholding upwards next month to reflect the new rates, but you, the taxpayer, can adjust them back downward via an IRS Form W-4 With Worksheet. The process is simple: you just claim more dependents. I don't have the current "red flag" level, but you didn't used to raise any Red Flags with the IRS unless you claimed more than 9 dependents.

Guess what else happens later in 2014, Dear Readers? RIIIIGHT, Elections for Congress, The Senate and your local yokels.

If We The People push this issue to or near 4/15/14, it WILL effect the 2014 Congressional elections. If the REAL "fiscal cliff" is then passed, the (D)emocrats will get the blame in the voting booths, and in January of 2015, Obumbler the wannabe Socialist is done. Yeah, he will occupy the office for the next two years, but with a hostile Senate and House, will get nothing done. Should he then try to rule by Executive Order, the new GOP Congress will then impeach, convict and remove him from office. Joe Biden doesn't have many virtues, but way more than Obumbler, and he's far less of a Socialist.

Have a Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday, and pleasant New Year. There's no Fiscal Cliff to fall over, over.

November 27, 2012

Here. This one is for all those who either went to Cook and Baker's School in the Army, or at least pulled enough Kitchen Police duty (KP) to have had some work helping the cook fry stuff. Or maybe, like me, you worked the French Fryer in Mickey Dees in your yute.

The scene seems to suggest that this cook is enough of an expert to have been assigned (or maybe he assigned himself) to make an instructional video on cooking some version of potstickers. That would be the fried version, not the steamed version.

There's a simple rule for deep-fat frying, and that rule is to have the right proportion of oil to fryable food so the food has enough cool (heat sink capability) in it that the frying process can be controlled, because the vid shows what happens when the cook ignores that proportion and heats far too much oil. The food flashes into steam below the surface of the oil, causing an explosion which throws hot oil at 400 degrees or so all over the place. That hot oil can get into the fire and create a massive Boiling Liquid Explosive Vapor Explosion (BLEVE), which can approach high-order explosive status. Even if it doesn't blow the kitchen off the map, it will surely injure the personnel. Okay, it's not a true BLEVE because it isn't contained by a vessel (tank), but it's close enough and the results could be the same: huge fireball.

In this vid, the cook remembered one of his emergency procedures: shut off the cooking flame, then he put the big pan on the floor, also a good reaction, but then he forgot to cover the pan. Instead, he tried to save the food! After getting close to several of the explosions of hot oil, he was reduced to a cowering, blubbering idiot who could do nothing but watch more explosions.

Most of the commenters over at the hard-bitten milblog Castle Argghhh! yukked at this, but it is exactly the same problem that probably just burned down at least a dozen houses across the country, when deep-fat turkey-fryers were improperly used.

November 25, 2012

This info request is about civics, the way your Citeh funds itself. Most municipalities work off of a tax base that is tied to property value, which is not the actual, immediate value of the real estate. The only reason that Citehs are not the worst of the gummint vote-buyers is that the millage rate limits their expenditure of public money, so they have to budget. Make that USED to have to budget.

Enter the monthly fee, in my Citeh (Gresham, OR), labeled "a fee to prevent more cuts" (cute name, innit?) Our City Council is trying to impose a fee, outside of the tax base, on every household and every business, of $7.50 per month.That's not a lot, but my basic research tell me that once these fees are introduced, they are usually raised, sometimes obscenely. In my case, I have to pay twice, because I run a small business here.

Back to the millage rate. The process of raising the millage rate involves the consent of the residents via an election. The process of sticking a new fee up our hoo-hoos does not, unless an ad-hoc committee arises to collect signatures and put the fee on the ballot in a special election (that could happen). Note that in Gresham's case, the City Council will put a new tax base on the ballot in 2014, and using the bludgeon of the new fee, will tell us to pass the new tax base or the fee will be continued, and likely, raised.

This is pure blackmail. As far as I know, the Gresham City Council members don't belong to the Mafia, but they are sure acting like they learned their civics at Mafia University.

Any Dear Readers who have information that might enliven my testimony before the Citeh Council next Tuesday, please leave it in comments.